[tex-live] TL 2005 post-installation questions

[lists.texlive at itayf.fastmail.fm]

Hi,

Finally I found time to install TL2005 and I have a few questions 
that I would appreciate your comments about.

1.
I am trying to understand the purpose of the TEX*CONFIG trees. 
If this is a distribution related thing -- why not a VAR tree; if 
it's supposed to be persistant across years -- why not in a 
texmf-local.  Is there  something special in the output of 
texconfig-sys, updmap-sys and fmtutil-sys?  (I honestly don't 
know :-(

2.
What's the purpose of the SYSTEXMF variable (especially compared 
to TEXMF)?

3.
texmf.cnf includes the following lines; that's the only spot in 
which TEXFORMATS is mentioned.
<quote>
TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c
MFBASES = .;$TEXMF/web2c
MPMEMS = .;$TEXMF/web2c
TEXPOOL = .;$TEXMF/web2c
MFPOOL = .;$TEXMF/web2c
MPPOOL = .;$TEXMF/web2c
</quote>
Should have been perhaps like that?
TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c
MFBASES = $TEXFORMATS
MPMEMS = $TEXFORMATS
TEXPOOL = $TEXFORMATS
MFPOOL = $TEXFORMATS
MPPOOL = $TEXFORMATS

4.
It is mentioned in http://tug.org/texlive/bugs.html that euclide 
is now obsolete.  I guess that the following sub-trees should be 
removed too?
texmf-dist/{source,doc}/latex/euclide}/
They probably don't harm anyone...


 	Thanks in advance
 	Itay